The Trump administration's pursuit of MS-13 may be feeding 'institutional schizophrenia' in the Justice Department

President
Donald Trump at speech about his proposed effort against the
MS-13 gang before federal, state, and local law-enforcement
officials in Brentwood, New York, July 28,
2017.REUTERS/Jonathan
Ernst

The Trump administration has singled out MS-13 as a
threat to the US, placing it on par with Mexican drug
cartels.

But experts and analysts don't see the gang as a danger
comparable to those cartels.

Differences between the administration and
law-enforcement agencies has the potential to harm overall
crime-fighting efforts.

Since first taking to the presidential campaign trail in 2015,
Donald Trump has zeroed in on the threat of drugs and crime in
the US, often tying it to immigration from the US's southern
neighbors.

Despite the public attention from the president and his
administration, the threat posed to the US by MS-13 may not be
the same as that posed by groups like Mexican drug
cartels.

"Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions has exaggerated the threat
posed by the criminal street gang MS-13," Peter Vincent, a former
Justice Department and Homeland Security official, told Business
Insider. Despite their role as enforcers and retailers in the US
for Mexican drug cartels, Vincent said, "MS-13 leaders are not
the shot callers."

But this week, in "another step toward fulfilling President
Trump's goal of stamping out the brutal transnational criminal
organization MS-13," the Justice Department designated MS-13 as a
priority for the department's Organized Crime and Drug
Enforcement Task Force, which includes members from across
federal law enforcement.

The designation allows the OCDETF to use drug laws, gun laws, tax
laws, and other enforcement tools to prosecute the gang.

"Just like we took Al Capone off the streets with our tax laws,
we will use whatever laws we have to get MS-13 off of our
streets," Sessions said in prepared remarks that appeared to equate
MS-13 with Mexican drug cartels.

A
policeman detains a suspected member of the MS-13 gang at a
checkpoint in Apopa, El Salvador, July 28,
2015.REUTERS/Jose
Cabezas

MS-13 is a potent criminal actor responsible for brutal violence
in the US — and the Justice Department has said it is not
the only group it will target — but analysts and former Justice
Department officials view the focus on the gang as out of
proportion to the threat it poses.

The Drug Enforcement Administration's 2017 National Drug Threat
Assessment labels Mexican transnational criminal organizations —
drug cartels — as the "greatest criminal drug threat" to the US,
with no other groups in position to challenge them.

"When you compare both of them, the Mexican cartels make the
MS-13 look like a bunch of choir boys," Mike Vigil, former chief
of international operations for the DEA, told Business Insider.
The Mexican cartels, Vigil said, are "diversified; they're
complex; they're highly structured; they have tentacles
throughout the United States."

Trump has singled out violent
crimes committed by MS-13 members in the US, particularly in
communities around Washington, DC, and New York City. During
2017, US prosecutors have filed at least 12 charges
against MS-13 members on the East Coast, including homicide
(though none of those cases including international drug
trafficking.)

Trump
and Sessions at the 36th Annual National Peace Officers' memorial
service, in Washington, May 15, 2017.AP Photo/Evan Vucci

But many of the crimes blamed on MS-13 are not ones that need
a transnational network to be carried out.

Trump has said the gang has "literally taken over" US cities, but
crime data indicates it is
responsible for a fraction of the country's gang problem — making
up a small portion of the country's gang members and of recent
arrests by ICE agents.

"There is no doubt that MS-13 represents a serious danger to
public safety," said Vincent, who coordinated the
extraditions of hundreds of drug traffickers and terrorists from
Colombia in the late 2000s. "But Attorney General Sessions has
inappropriately equated the MS-13 threat to the danger to the
homeland and our communities posed by transnational criminal
organizations."

There are varying estimates
of the number of MS-13 members in the US, "But the way it is
presented, you hear that and you think, oh, like the Sinaloa
cartel, or Chapo Guzman, or Pablo Escobar," José Miguel Cruz, a
Florida International University professor who studies gang
members in El Salvador and the US, told The Daily
Beast. "But these are street gangs. Most of it is composed of
kids, starting as young as 11."

What effect the prioritization of MS-13 will have on how
law-enforcement resources dedicated to fighting organized crime
will be apportioned remains to be seen.

A Justice Department spokesman told Business Insider that
targeting all transnational criminal organizations was an
"absolute priority" for the Trump administration, and that the
OCDETF "is the tip of the spear in this effort."

That effort "has traditionally included, and continues to
include, drug cartels and our efforts to disrupt and dismantle
the largest and most dangerous drug cartels continue unabated,"
Justice Department spokesman Ian Prior told Business Insider,
citing US efforts to extradite a Sinaloa cartel leader arrested in Mexico
City and the recent successful prosecutions of Zetas and Gulf
cartel members in the US.

But Vincent and Vigil both cautioned that elevating MS-13 as an
enforcement priority would strain US authorities.

John
Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, inside a
warehouse where a drug-smuggling tunnel was found, near the
Mexican border in Otay Mesa, California, November 3,
2010.REUTERS/Nelvin C. Cepeda/San
Diego Union-Tribune/Pool

"There is a massive disconnect" between the Justice Department
and law-enforcement agencies, Vigil said. "That basically is
going to lead to turmoil in terms of having a proper focus and
the allocation of resources to try to stem the movement of drugs
flowing from the Mexican cartels into the United States."

That disconnect would ultimately benefit those cartels'
operations, Vigil added, and pointed to the potential for
increased deportations to recreate the
dynamic that aided MS-13's growth in the past.

"I think that the mood between the rank and file is that DEA has
been significantly diminished," said Vigil, who joined the DEA not
long after its founding in 1973 and worked undercover in
Mexico and Colombia. "They are not receiving the support that
they should, because they are the premier agency to deal with
counterdrug initiatives and operations."

Vigil said the recent departure of Chuck Rosenberg, the former
acting head of the DEA, was likely due in part to disagreements
with the Trump administration over threats posed by gangs
and cartels.

Rosenberg, an ally of ousted
FBI Director James Comey, was also critical of Trump's comments
on police brutality and highly skeptical of Trump's plans for a
wall on the US-Mexico border, Vigil said.

Vincent said equating the threats posed by MS-13 to those posed
by transnational criminal organizations was a "false equivalency
[that] is dangerous and irresponsible" and "is creating
unwelcomed stress and strain within the Department of Justice and
its operational agencies," which include the DEA, the FBI, and
ATF.

"I am disheartened by the current conflict, I dare say
institutional schizophrenia, within the US Department of
Justice," Vincent added.

"I have no clue why DOJ is making the MS-13 the primary focus,"
Vigil said. "There's a lot of other gangs and street gangs that
are probably much more dangerous and much more violent than the
MS-13."